By John Richardson IT COULD be a game of chicken designed to pull Russia back to the negotiating table and the Saudis might win the game. This is how you could be interpreting the Saudi decision to raise oil production and offer aggressive discounts to customers following last week’s failure by OPEC to agree cuts […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Coronavirus: No recovery in petrochemicals likely until end-2020 and here are ten reasons why
By John Richardson HERE IS your print-out-and-keep 10-point guide, summarising the key themes I’ve covered over the last two weeks with important updates. I hope this helps your petrochemicals business in its planning process. Before we begin, I am afraid to say that we have probably lost a year’s worth of demand growth.Growth likely to […]
Coronavirus: China ethylene glycols demand could fall by 1.2m tonnes as imports also diminish
By John Richardson IN GEORGE ORWELL’S magnificent parody of communism, Animal Farm, he writes; “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’”. So it goes in petrochemicals value chains. All the chains have been affected by the coronavirus outbreak. They all share the commonality of a big loss over at least […]
Decline of 2.1m tonnes in 2020 global polypropylene demand now seems best possible outcome
By John Richardson EVERY DAY that goes by when China is not entirely back at work the economic damage is multiplying. It already looks as if the best China can hope for is real as opposed to politically manufactured 2020 GDP growth of around 2.25%. And that assumes a rapid economic rebound from Q2, which […]
Global PVC demand could fall by 1.1m tonnes as coronavirus crisis becomes global
By John Richardson YOU CANNOT stimulate economic activity when factories and offices need to be shut down, airlines are forced to cancel thousands of flights and conference organisers are compelled to cancel events. This is the dilemma that central bankers face, raising major doubts over whether “buy on the dip” will continue to work in […]
China polyethylene imports could be 3m tonnes lower as economy seizes up
By John Richardson IT IS TIME for crisis planning, I am afraid, as a result of the World Health Organisation’s warning that the “window of opportunity” for preventing a global pandemic is narrowing. The risks have increased substantially over the last few days with major outbreaks of COVID-19 in Italy and South Korea. A disease […]
Global polyethylene demand in 2020 at risk of 2.4m decline because of coronavirus
By John Richardson I AM a bit confused this morning following some excitement about the Chinese decision to allow polyethylene (PE) importers to apply for exemptions from the 25% additional tariffs on US high-density (HDPE) and linear-low density PE (LLDPE) that have been in place since August 2018. One of my contacts for instance sent […]
Coronavirus: Global polypropylene demand in 2020 could fall by 2.6m tonnes over last year
By John Richardson SOME GOOD news might be that official Chinese state media announced that the number of coronavirus cases outside Hubei province had up until Saturday fallen for 12 days in a row. But given the difficulty of diagnosing the disease, and last week’s sharp upward revision in Chinese estimates of the total number […]
Coronavirus threatens 2.9m tonnes of China PP demand as uncertainties increase
By John Richardson THE RUMOURS travelled around my contacts, and I am sure many of your contacts, for several weeks that China was undercounting the number of coronavirus cases (the disease has now been given a name – COVID-19). Someone said to me last week, “People go to hospital, get an initial positive diagnosis, are […]
More than 3m tonnes of Chinese polyethylene demand at risk from coronavirus
By John Richardson THE GOOD news is that medical experts believe the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak will follow the path of SARS and die down by April or May at the latest when warm weather usually arrives in China. Coronaviruses in general, and SARS is part of the same family as this latest […]